“Yeah. A little magic will increase your life span around Rache,” Jenks said, and I flicked a drop of coffee at him. Laughing, he rose up and buzzed off to find the new resident pixies to help him dig up the bulbs.

But he was right. A little magic would help keep Stef alive.

CHAPTER

6

The Belfry was in better shape than I remembered, stuffy now that the original open-air vents had been replaced with double-paned windows. The eight walls, once clapboard and studs, had been insulated and painted a neutral off-white, but the floor was the original wide, underfloor plank. Wayde had made the improvements over a year ago, creating a snug place to be where he could stay out of my hair and do his bodyguard thing both. It was his cot that was down in Stef’s room. Even without it, the space was cramped, boxes from my room and the boat stacked on all sides. Books, mostly.

It was Wayde who’d fastened the big shelf under the bell for Bis, too. Guilt for not having thought of it myself layered over the deeper guilt of him being comatose as I stood on a box and carefully set the somnolent gargoyle in the cat bed that he had insisted wasn’t needed. For a species that spent their entire lives out on church parapets, it was probably overkill. A picture of us in the garden sat propped up against the angled wall, and my gut hurt.

“I’m sorry, Bis,” I whispered, wishing he was simply sleeping, not comatose with his soul in a bottle. Depressed, I draped the Gargoyles T-shirt he’d gotten at Disneyland over him. “We will fix this,” I promised, but I didn’t know how. Al wouldn’t help as any success would increase my tie to Hodin, and the two demons hated each other. It was more than sibling rivalry, and I still didn’t know how to get them to kiss and make up.

I took a long step backward off the box, the thump of my heels hitting the dusty floorboards going all the way up my spine. It had taken some effort and time, but I’d finally found a few spells and curses that I thought would work in tandem to perfume Piscary’s. Jenks and Stef had gathered what I needed from the garden, then gone on to start a nice little fire in the graveyard when I’d mentioned doing the spell out there. It was a plant. Being outside would be advantageous.

Jenks had the tiny bulblets from the lily. Fern was no problem. The rosemary had been in the kitchen garden. The plantain grew in the weedy graveyard, and the black cohosh in the cooler, shady, more formal garden under the oak tree. The rest of the spell was tapping into the demon collective for the curse I needed. And of course using a ley line for the energy to do it.

The tricky, three-stage magic wasn’t as straightforward as my usual spells, and I wasn’t sure it would work. The first step was a demon curse to force the bulb to grow and mature. A mundane agriculture charm attached to it would make the lily more potent and long-lived than usual, and then finally, I’d use a ley line spell to link it to Piscary’s, where the lily’s scent would appear as if from nowhere. None of it was elven magic.

Which would please Al, I thought sourly as I moved boxes to get to a garden-facing window. All I needed now was a stylus made of apple or linden.

Tired, I wedged the window without a screen open and leaned out. Sunset-cooled air spilled in around me, and my shoulders slumped in the cool evening. I could see everything from up here. No wonder Wayde had liked it. The waxing moon had not yet set. It was a perfect time to craft a spell of growth.

Down below amid the rasping clatter and bright dust of pixy wings, Stef fiddled with the fire. Though technically a warlock, she had a good handle on spell implementation, just not how to make them from scratch. That she knew how to set a circle didn’t surprise me. I’d found out early—and the hard way—that most nurses could.

I picked Jenks out from the cloud of wings and dust by his attitude, hovering beside Stef as if she needed protection. Seeing them together, a smile found me. If Jenks was one thing, it was a protector. And a warrior, a gardener, a dad, husband. Friend.

I tapped the siding under the window for his attention, and he immediately rose up, coming to a happy, gold-dusted halt before me. “The fire is nice,” I said, glad to get rid of the waste wood the contractors had left behind. “All I need is a stirring rod.”

“Yew?” he guessed, and I shook my head. Maybe if I was contacting the dead, but I was trying to confer a temporary state of immortality to lengthen the flower’s life, and apple was good for that. Or linden.

“Apple or linden would work better.”

“Crab apple okay?” he asked, and when I nodded, he saluted me and dropped back down, only the diminishing sound of his wings and fading dust saying he’d ever been there.

Immediately I pulled myself in and shut the window. I’d like to say it was luck that the garden held everything I needed, but I knew better. Whipping up a complicated, three-tiered, three-disciplined spell would be nearly impossible if I had to get everything at a charm shop. Especially when Patricia wouldn’t sell to me anymore. Demons crash your shopping spree one time, and no one ever forgets.

“Bye, Bis,” I whispered as I grabbed two spell books and started for the door. But then I jerked to a halt and returned, climbing back on the box to take the bottle from my pocket and nestle it beside him. It held his soul, along with the baku, and I was lucky that the vampires hadn’t known what it was and had assumed it was a knickknack.

“We will find a way, Bis. I promise,” I said as I touched my forehead to his before backing down from the box and going downstairs. He had saved my life without thought. It had cost him everything.

But my depression shifted to surprise when I got to the sanctuary and found that while I’d been searching my library, Stef had cleaned. The lights were up to show that the furniture had been thoroughly dusted and vacuumed. The floors were swept, and all the bits and pieces of wood, nails, and even that frayed extension cord were gone.

It looked great, but now I felt guilty on top of everything, and I quickly made my way down the hall to the garden. The fifty-five-gallon drum was still the top step, but there was now a more stable layer of rocks leading to the slightly damp, dark earth. Damn, she’s been busy.

Jenks’s dust brightened at the door squeak. He rose up, waiting for me as I stepped over the low wall and into the graveyard. A cheerful fire burned a few steps in at a firepit made out of some of the smaller foundation stones. Three more were arranged like seats. It was a sweet setup, and I wondered why Ivy and I hadn’t done anything like this. But then again, we hadn’t had several tons of rock lying around in the backyard at the time.

“This is nice,” I said, and Stef smiled and tossed another broken two-by-four on the bright flames. “But wow, I don’t want you to think you’re the maid.”

“I don’t like dirt.” Stef grimaced. “And I didn’t touch your room or that second bath.”

“Good. Ah, we haven’t been in the church all winter. I don’t normally live like this,” I said, even more embarrassed. “Very clever,” I added, gesturing at the fire. “Foundation stone?”